International Polar Bear Day

[EternalOptimist]

Arctic ice is up, Antarctic ice is up and Polar Bears are up

Phew! No reason to dismantle Western Industrial society after all


The link shows twenty good reasons to celebrate the success story of the efforts at Polar bear conservation, written by a zoologist and not a computer modeller

[d000hg]

You just wait until their population soars out of control and we have them nosing around our bins and eating middle-class infants when their mother pops inside to get another glass of wine.

[EternalOptimist]

You just wait until their population soars out of control and we have them nosing around our bins and eating middle-class infants when their mother pops inside to get another glass of wine.

you aint kidding. They are known as problem bears. Like foxes except they can run as fast as ussein Bolt, weigh three times as much as big daddy and carry eight razors to slash you to bits, four on each paw.
There are only two animals on the planet that see humans as natural prey , at least you can outrun a crocodile

[d000hg]

You can? I thought they were fairly nippy.

[pjclarke]

Arctic ice is up, Antarctic ice is up and Polar Bears are up

Phew! No reason to dismantle Western Industrial society after all


The link shows twenty good reasons to celebrate the success story of the efforts at Polar bear conservation, written by a zoologist and not a computer modeller

Six reasons to be (actually) sceptical ...

- The long term trend in Arctic sea ice is strongly negative. Last month it was the third lowest on record for January. The question is not will the Arctic become ice-free in summer, the debate is over when. This is the main reason the US listed PBs under its Endangered Species Act.

- Polar bears occur in 19 discrete subpopulations. We have good trend numbers for ten, one increasing, six stable, three declining.

- The decline is despite an international agreement on hunting, which reversed the severe overharvesting of the species.

- The author of the '20 reasons' ferrago describes herself as 'different kind of polar bear expert', is an outlier, at odds with mainstream opinion (eg the IUCN PBSG). She also receives $750/month from the Heartland Institute, a free-market 'think tank', perhaps best known for this series of billboards.

- The document is published not by Science or Nature, but by the 'Global Warming Policy Foundation', Nigel Lawson's secretive think tank, described by the Independent as '"the UK's most prominent source of climate-change denial'.

- Every study published on the economics of climate change concludes that the benefit/cost ratio of mitigation is positive.

Have a good weekend.

[EternalOptimist]

When they attack the person and not the science, you know you have won

[BrilloPad]

Its because we have been sending public school boys to them for food.

Does not mean their natural habitat is not getting smaller though.

[pjclarke]

When they attack the person and not the science, you know you have won

And when they start citing bought-and-paid-for charlatans ...?

But ok. Take the 'reason to be cheerful' about polar bears from Crockford's document that you find the most compelling, and explain in a sentence why you find it so. I am sure, as a self-described 'sceptic' you checked her facts and figures.

To me, at a quick glance it seems like she has cherry-picked the smaller bear populations where we have the least data, and asserted that they're just fine, without a great deal of evidence, or small areas of the Arctic where the ice decline is slower than the average.... etc etc.

Bob Ward, of the Grantham Institute described the function of the GWPF as 'a way of pumping material into the debate that hasn't been through scrutiny'. This seems to me a perfect example of same.

Go on, prove me wrong.

[EternalOptimist]

You can? I thought they were fairly nippy.

not at all. they catch their grub using stealth.
They use their tail to launch themselves from under water and hit you at about 50 kph
so long as you are a body length away from the water, you should be ok.

I had one launch at me in a crocodile farm up near Darwin. He had been captured for being a nuisance, and was a well known grumpy bastid. I was looking in his pen and couldn't see him, next thing the bars were bending and this great big gob full of teeth was two inches from me beak

[EternalOptimist]

And when they start citing bought-and-paid-for charlatans ...?

But ok. Take the 'reason to be cheerful' about polar bears from Crockford's document that you find the most compelling, and explain in a sentence why you find it so. I am sure, as a self-described 'sceptic' you checked her facts and figures.

To me, at a quick glance it seems like she has cherry-picked the smaller bear populations where we have the least data, and asserted that they're just fine, without a great deal of evidence, or small areas of the Arctic where the ice decline is slower than the average.... etc etc.

Bob Ward, of the Grantham Institute described the function of the GWPF as 'a way of pumping material into the debate that hasn't been through scrutiny'. This seems to me a perfect example of same.

Go on, prove me wrong.

Bob Ward is a paid lobbyist. What's any of that got to do with science ?